Should you have a joint account?

Every week Cosmopolitan.co.uk's very own Venus & Mars give their take on the most talked about love, sex and relationships stories. See where the his 'n' hers views clash, collide and occasionally complement each other

If you trust someone with your heart, shouldn't you trust them with your cash?

It sounds very noble in principle but in my experience a broken heart mends much quicker than a broken bank account.

When my ex and I parted company I recall a couple of months of wailing, gnashing of teeth and the odd bitter text before I re-adjusted to a merry life of telly watching and cricket obsessing.

But the time it took to wipe off my debts from those days of 'let's split the bills and I'll take care of the deposits' was, ooh, let me check - two and a half years later. Last week, to be precise.

There is something very lovely about being in a position where you can say, 'Don't worry, hon, I'll get this' and undoubtedly there are going to be times in any relationship where one of you is going to be picking up the tab more than the other. But there's a big difference between going with the flow and letting your other half sponge off you.

The boot was on the other foot at a particularly low point of my relationship with another ex. We'd recently moved in together and due to my slackness a cheque that should have been banked and cleared by the weekend was still nestling in my wallet. My ex was rightfully not best pleased.

The nadir of the whole weekend came around the time of the EastEnders omnibus when I arrived home with 50p to contribute to Sunday dinner. My ex left me with a large flea in my ear (inedible) and had dinner with her family instead.

I didn't blame her. After all, why should she have to pay for my rubbish banking skills?

It would be grossly unfair to suggest that either Mars or Venus is better with money. But what I think we can agree on is that when it comes to splashing the cash we have very different value systems.

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£499 for a pair of ankle breaking Christian Louboutin shoes versus £600 for a Kevin Pietersen signed England shirt is a debate that could spark a major domestic at the end of any joint account holding couple's financial year.

In the case of Amy versus Blake, I guess anything with the word 'joint' in it would seem like a bad idea.

If I'd been an advocate of the joint bank account philosophy, I probably wouldn't be writing this column on my parents' archaic PC 'oop' North right now. Instead, I'd be sitting in a nice little one-bedroom pad by a park somewhere in London.

Nor would I be chasing invoice payments with greater urgency than Obama tackling the US economic crisis. But I am. Because having returned from my four-month jaunt to Barcelona, mid-credit-crunch, my finances are tighter than a pair of Russell Brand's jeans. And as a result, at the grand old age of 34, I'm back in the bedroom I grew up in (thanks Mum and Dad) until I've scraped together enough cash for a London flat deposit.

Of course "the current climate" isn't entirely to blame. I'm just jumping on the bandwagon. It's more likely down to my continual 'investment' into adventures over ISAs, a career path motivated by passion over pay-rises and pension schemes... and a cavalier attitude to credit cards during my reckless youth.

When my ex and I first got together, it didn't take long for the panic to set in. What if he thinks less of me when I tell him I can't afford to take weekend breaks to Paris? What if he thinks I'm a failure because I earn less now than he was earning ten years ago? Will he dump me when I tell him I have debts? Should I be telling him all of this upfront? But what if he thinks I'm a gold digger? What if his Mum thinks I'm a chav?

In the end, I blurted it out, true to form, after too many wines (hey, you can't buy class). He smiled and told me he'd figured I wasn't exactly landed gentry when he first met me seventeen years earlier in Fresher's Week and my cashcard got refused in Morrisson's while trying to pay for No Frills Custard Creams.

He didn't care about the discrepancy in our bank balances. He only cared about me. So much so, he invited me to live in his flat and offered to pay off the entirety of my debts.

I said no, of course. Why should he have to pay for my mistakes? And how bad would I feel now, us having broken up? Could I really walk tall in a pair of Christian Laboutins knowing they'd been paid for from the hard-earned coffers of an ex?

Hmmm, you're damn right.

Methinks it could be time to swap dating websites. Anyone know the url for that sugardaddy site?

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